


It's Been A Long Time

by HannaM



Category: Collar x Malice (Visual Novel)
Genre: F/M, Future Fic, Tenderness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:48:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,058
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22703452
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HannaM/pseuds/HannaM
Summary: When he's finally released from prison, Ichika is there waiting to pick him up.
Relationships: Hoshino Ichika/Shiraishi Kageyuki
Comments: 6
Kudos: 88
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 5





	It's Been A Long Time

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kazesuke](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kazesuke/gifts).



He hadn’t quite realized how close he’d gotten to forgetting her face until she was standing there outside Fuchu Prison waiting for him. And then, once he's close enough she immediately throws her arms around him tightly, so wonderfully tightly, and yet...

“Your hair,” Ichika mumbles into his neck. “Somehow I forgot they’d make you cut it…”

“Wait, wait…” He pulls out of the hug and takes hold of her face with both hands solemnly. “Let me see you.”

He’s intent on memorizing every feature this time, up until he gets to her eyes, wet with tears, and his stomach turns over. 

“I’m sorry…” Ichika scrubs at her face, her voice shaky. “I know I promised I wouldn’t cry…”

He kisses her for that, because he wants her to be happy, not sad. 

After all, he’s free. 

The kiss lasts longer than he’d expected, with Ichika wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing back so fiercely that for a while he forgets his original intent.

“Shiraishi…” she whispers when they finally part, and the name runs through him like an electric current.

For most of his life he’s been a number. He doesn’t even know how they came up with Shiraishi Kageyuki, but it’s quite firm in his mind: there was the time before Shiraishi Kageyuki, and there was the time after Shiraishi Kageyuki, but even when the prison assigned him a new number, a part of him thought, _perhaps someday I will get to be Shiraishi Kageyuki again._ The possibility was something to look forward to.

Because that is what Ichika calls him. In her eyes, he’s a person. Even more surprisingly, a person worthy of love. 

She smiles, wrapping a scarf around his neck though he scarcely noticed the cold. “Let’s go home, Shiraishi.”

He knows from Ichika’s letters that her younger brother has moved out, but somehow it didn’t occur to him that this meant a clean empty room with fresh sheets. He doesn’t quite understand why she’s showing him so proudly, until he sees the little design of cats playing on the sheets. 

“Is this…” He blinks. “For me?”

“Of course it is! Did you think I’d make you sleep in the kitchen?” Ichika beams. 

“No, I thought I’d sleep with you.”

Ichika’s cheeks redden, and he wants to kiss them, so he does.

“What? I’m your boyfriend, isn’t it expected?”

“You should still have your own private space!” Ichika insists, crossing her arms and refusing to look him in the eye. “You can bring your own things and decorate it however you like…”

He shrugs. “I don’t have a lot of things.” The only possessions he’d cared about getting back were his clothes and cell phone with the charm Ichika had given him. 

“You might buy some eventually.” 

“I don’t think so.” He touches her face, feeling how hot her cheek is. _Cute._

“Well, anyway, I thought we might go out for dinner to celebrate…”

He smiles. “I don’t want to.”

“Really?” Her face falls.

“If this is ‘home’, I want to stay here with you.” 

It was a gift, being able to see the way her eyebrows furrowed again. 

“Is that your way of saying you want a home-cooked meal?”

“Your cooking?” He hadn’t thought of that, but now that she mentioned it, he liked the sound of it. “Yes. That will do.”

Ichika looks exasperated, but not entirely unhappy. She’s very proud of her cooking, he knows. Though evidently not so proud that she doesn’t try to get him to help her, even if he’s hopeless at chopping vegetables and more interested in watching her than watching water boil. 

More than once, she lectures him for getting in her way, but then when she thinks he’s not looking, she just smiles. 

She’s so strange, he could observe her forever. 

“Shiraishi…” Ichika pauses, turning to him with a curious little frown. “Should I go on calling you Shiraishi? Or…” She bites her lip. “Maybe I should call you Kageyuki now.”

It’s not a question he’d expected, and he has no idea how to answer it. “No one has ever called me Kageyuki,” he says, slowly. 

He wonders if she forgets, sometimes, that he didn’t have a childhood like her, with parents and siblings and names. 

“Well…” Ichika touches his arm gently. “We’ll think about it.”

She returns to the food, humming something he doesn’t recognize. Perhaps one of the songs from her brother’s band… (He congratulates himself for remembering that kind of fact about someone he doesn’t particularly know)

He glances over at her bed, made as neatly as the bed she has given him, but far more inviting somehow. 

Apparently she sees him looking, because she mumbles, “It’s not very big…”

He’s taller than her, certainly, but he doesn’t think that’s the real reason. “So? Sleep on top of me.”

“Oh!” She looks relieved. “You mean, just to sleep. Well, maybe tonight…”

“We can also have sex.”

Ichika drops the wooden spoon, her face bright red, and Shiraishi grins. He knew she would have a reaction like that, and it was completely worth it. 

“We’re boyfriend and girlfriend, aren’t we?”

“We… it’s… you don’t just jump to that! We’ve only kissed two or three times!”

He laughs. “Then let’s kiss more and make up for lost time.”

Ichika picks up the spoon with a scowl. “We are not having this conversation when dinner’s almost ready! If I burn something because of you, it’s not my fault!”

He can feel the smile on his face widen without him having to think about it. “It was a joke.”

“Was it?”

“Probably.”

Ichika narrows her eyes at him, turning off the stove. “I don’t believe you.”

He sighs dramatically. “How sad. I’ve waited all these years for a girl to call me a liar.”

“A girl who is cooking your dinner!” 

“Thank you. Let’s eat-“

She pokes him with the end of the wooden spoon. “Not yet. Sit down and I’ll set the table.”

He sits obediently, realizing belatedly he actually is very hungry. 

“Ichika,” he says, as she sits down.

“Yes?”

“Thank you. For… everything.”

Ichika smiles, and reaches to squeeze his hand. “You’re welcome. And… it’s good to have you home.”

“I’m home,” he repeats slowly. It’s not a phrase he’s ever had the opportunity to say to someone. 

Shiraishi smiles. 


End file.
